At least fifteen hundred volunteers will search for 16-year-old Yoran Krol along the Merwede and Waal in North Brabant on Saturday. This is said by the Missing Coordination Platform (CPV), the organization that coordinates the search. The student from Sleeuwijk disappeared after visiting a youth center in nearby Almkerk on the night of December 23 to 24. Shortly afterwards, his bicycle was found near the Merwede Bridge, about ten kilometers away.
CPV organizes the search around the Merwede and Waal rivers in consultation with Yoran Krol’s family and the police. “This is the largest turnout since we existed,” says CPV spokesperson Ramona van Urk. CPV was founded after a boy went missing in Urk in 2016 and a group of residents went looking for him.
Volunteers for the search for Yoran Krol are assigned to groups of five search areas. The entire search area covers about twenty-five kilometers and is concentrated around the water. The volunteers are assigned a search area that they can comb in about two hours. They are looking for Yoran Krol himself, but also for the clothes he wore. On Friday people found his coat in the Merwede.
Found jacket
The police contributed to the search location, says police spokesman Dick Advocaat. “Yesterday the jacket was found near the river near Papendrecht. This strengthens our suspicion that the boy ended up in the water.” The police themselves are also present during the search, including with sonar boats, sniffer dogs and helicopters.
“We are very happy with this commitment of volunteers,” says Advocaat, “because we do not have enough manpower for an action of this magnitude.” Since the disappearance of Anne Faber, in which volunteers played a crucial role, the police have started to work more closely with citizens in these types of cases. Around one o’clock in the afternoon, volunteers were still queuing up in Sleeuwijk to start the search.
The search will continue until sunset on Saturday.